Blog of Elder Hamish Macpherson

So my first week in the mission has gone by, and boy what a week it has been! I wish I could write everything, but I don’t have a lot of time on this computer, so we’ll see how it goes.

I woke up early last Tuesday morning, and I arrived that same afternoon at the Sacramento airport. Safe and sound. I was with one other Elder from the MTC, Elder Alfaro from Toronto Canada. He came to this same mission, though he’s Spanish speaking. It’s funny because on the plane we met two Senior sisters who worked for the mission office here in Sacramento, one was accompanying the other since she had come to Salt Lake City for a funeral service. They were very friendly once they found us, and they knew all about our situation and visa delays.

We met and hugged our mission president, President Jardine near the baggage pickup. I got to meet his wife and his two assistants, Elder Hammond and another I can’t remember the name of at the moment, they (the assistants) took us on a quick tour of the city, inluding the state capitol where the “Governator” works, then to the beautiful Sacramento Temple for a quick lunch (which was Subway, Derek, haha!), and then back to President Jardine’s house for orientation.

I met my first companion and trainer there, Elder Groshong (pronounced as it looks, though the “g” is silent”) — in missionary terms he’s my “Dad” and I’m his “Son” since he’s training me. Our assigned area is East Sacramento, or “East Sac” as most Elders call it, the stake is, not surprisingly Sacramento Stake, and the Ward is Hurley ward. I’ve only been to one Sacrament Meeting so far, but the people are really nice, and we’ve had a dinner appointment every day since we’ve been here.

I was an “ET” or Emergency Transfer coming in to the mission; both me and the Elder Alfaro I mentioned earlier. So we mixed things up a bit when we came in, and a few companionships were shuffled around. I get along great with Elder Groshong though. He’s from Ohio, so not too far from Canada. At least he knows what cold weather is like! Hehe.

Speaking of weather it’s been pretty nice since I got here. The first few days especially. Now it’s starting to get a little cooler here and there, but this is all just progressing towards a blistering summer I keep hearing about. Well I can’t complain… yet.

Oh, and I have to mention this. I saw a palm tree! Might not be such a big deal for some people, but this little Canadian boy here had never seen one before, so it was quite a sight to behold! Of course now I see them every day, but I still love it. Seriously, I wanna take one home.

Me and Elder Groshong are on bikes! The one I bought (see earlier posts) is working great. It even has a little sensor on it so I can see how far I’ve gone, the temperature, and speed. So far we’ve done about 45 miles in a week. Which amounted to about 5 hours of actual biking time. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I have a helmet too, and I am wearing it!

One of the mission rules is that ALL Elders must have a part in there hair. And so your truly is obeying, haha. I almost forgot to mention that before the assistants took us to President’s house, they took us to their’s first and parted our hair! Just so we’d be all ready for our trainers. Haha, sounds like we’re show animals now. Haha.

Okay! I don’t have a lot of time left to write, but let me talk a little bit about the work. The people here are mostly nice, they’ll talk to you when you tract (go door to door) or contact on the streets, and a lot already have christian backgrounds. There’s definitely some “crazy” people around though, believe me, I’ve already seen it. But for the most part I feel pretty safe.

If there’s one weird thing about Sacramento that I want to get across in this post, it’s the concept of “Gated Communites.” Basically an entire block of town is gated, or blocked off from the rest, thus creating a separate neighborhood. It’s really strange. And a lot of them you can’t even get into unless you have a passcode, or it’s a certain time of day.

Despite the oddities. We’re doing great. Elder Groshong actually baptized a nice woman last Saturday that he had been teaching before, and now we’re teaching her brother. He already knows a lot, so we’re praying that he finds out the truth for himself, and follows her example. We’re actually going to see him today!

There’s a few other people we’ve met, and are meeting with. I’ll let you know more about them in next week’s update! For now, I hope you’ll all continue to write me! I’m so grateful for all the emails you sent, I read them all, though I’m sorry I’m not able to reply to each individually.

Elder Groshong is telling me to hurry it up. So I better go! I love you all. So take care. Remember the Church is true, why else would I spend two years doing this? :)

Love,
Elder Macpherson